Why is it that whenever they can't find anything substantive to say about their opponents, they resort to the same, tired old ad hominems? They could at least come up with another one, like saying the Republican target is ugly,or has bad breath, or that his mommy dresses him funny, or something. Mean-spiritedness isn't restricted to Democrats, of course. But it would appear that when it comes to imagination, they're as limited as trash-talkers as they are as policy makers.

It's been said before, and I'll say it now: even if President Obama manages to win on November 6, the ugly, nasty campaign he's run guarantees that he won't be able to govern. If he thought he had a problem with gridlock during his first term, it's hard to see how he couldn't have known that going as persistently and perversely negative as he has could do anything but intensify the partisan rancor during his second.

I'm told that the Romney campaign, at least, expects an outcome even closer than 2000. And given the degree to which technology has changed the election day ground game, there is certain to be an epic tale to be told when the smoke clears- hopefully some time before noon EST on January 20.

Ms. Chamberlain, like me, voted for Evan McMullin in November. Like me, she holds no brief for Hillary Clinton or her agenda. But she cannot, as she put it, "throw roses at Hitler."

As I've said before, comparing Trump to Hitler strikes me as harsh. I believe that Trump is a power-hungry narcissist who exhibits disturbing signs of psychopathy, like Hitler. Like Hitler, he has stigmatized defenseless minorities- Muslims and undocumented aliens, rather than Jews- and made them scapegoats for the nation's troubles. Like Hitler, he has ridden a wave of irrational hatred and emotion to power. Like Hitler's, his agenda foreshadows disaster for the nation he has been chosen to lead.

Evan McMullin has devoted most of his post-college life- even to the point of foregoing marriage and a family- to fighting ISIS and al Qaeda and our nation's deadliest enemies as a clandestine officer for the CIA. He has done so at the risk of his life.

He has seen authoritarianism in action close-up. One of his main jobs overseas was to locate and facilitate the elimination of jihadist warlords. Evan McMullin knows authoritarians.

And when he looks at Donald Trump, what he sees is an authoritarian like the ones he fought overseas. He knows Donald Trump. After leaving the CIA he served as policy director for the Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives. He tells about his first encounter with The Donald in that role in this opinion piece he wrote for today's New York Times.

In fact, when Mitt Romney and Tom Coburn and all the others who were recruited to run as a conservative third-party candidate against Trump and Hillary Clinton backed out, McMulli…

This is a great idea for three reasons. First, private enterprise is the future of space exploration, and as far as I know we will be the first spacefaring nation to put most of its eggs in that basket. Second, it's nice to have eggs! Since the Obama administration canceled the Constellation program to develop the Ares booster and the Orion crew vehicle (though it subsequently reinstated the Orion part of the program), the United States has been twiddling its thumbs while China has taken great leaps toward the moon and other countries- including Russia, India, and Japan- have to various degrees intensified their own space programs. It would be both tragic and foolhardy for the nation which first…

Robert Elart Waters

,,,is a retired Lutheran minister who, except for his years in the ministry, has been a lifelong political activist who cannot be ideologically pigeonholed. He is a political independent and Neo-Moderate who believes that the incivility of our political discourse and the extremism and ideological rigidity of both political parties threatens our continued existence as a free people.